University Pulls German Defense Minister's Doctoral Degree

By

Patrick McGroarty

Updated Feb. 23, 2011 4:00 p.m. ET

BERLIN—Opposition lawmakers sought to entangle German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the plagiarism scandal embroiling her defense minister, even as the public seemed largely willing to forgive him for borrowing large sections of his doctoral thesis without attribution.

Meanwhile, the University of Bayreuth, where Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg received his doctoral degree in 2007, considered his scholarly transgressions serious enough that it revoked the doctorate Wednesday evening. University president Rüdiger Bormann said a...